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With the appointment of a new science minister, Koreans expect their country to march into the fourth industrial revolution, characterized by a fusion of cutting-edge technologies, with the big hope that they can innovate their way out of an emerging economic crisis — and win a Nobel prize in the process.

Researchers from MIPT and the University of Bonn (Germany) have shown that heart tissues of different origins can contract in sync. In a series of experiments, they first merged two rat tissues of different ages and then combined rat and mouse tissue. Excitation waves were transmitted successfully from one tissue to another, which theoretically means that artificially grown heart patches can fit in with excitable cardiac tissues. The paper was published in Biomaterials Science.

Gamma-ray bursts are among the most energetic and explosive events in the universe. They are also short-lived, lasting from a few milliseconds to about a minute. This has made it tough for astronomers to observe a gamma-ray burst in detail.

Based on the feedback from the research community and the results of the public discussion during the RSF Expert Council meeting this June, RSF announced the steps to improve its review processes.

According to the results of the first three competitions within the ambitious Presidential funding program launched in March 2017, 504 young scientists will be awarded with grants worth of 1.5-2 million rubles per year; 239 youth research groups will be awarded with annual funding of 3-5 million rubles; 31 laboratories will be awarded with annual 30 million rubles of RSF grants plus 2 million rubles of co-funding from industrial partner.

The program was developed by the RSF on behalf of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This call for proposals was conducted jointly with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan (MAFF/AFFRCS) for the first time. The scientists in all research fields by the RSF classifier could submit their proposals targeting the solutions of 5 research problems that had been agreed with the Japanese funding partner.